Saturday, April 20, 2013

Quiet, Serendipitous Finds

The overcast sky, the wild wind and the long road seemed akin to a
visual metaphor of the storm that had raged inside my mind since few days. It was nine in the morning and I was in IIT Guwahati, driving past a middle-aged woman, with dark and sturdy calves smeared in mud, bent over a bed of frail-looking yellow flowers that lined the campus
road, plucking weeds and dropping them into the bamboo basket strapped on her
back. Leaving behind a large, tree-lined pond and the morning rush of students cycling
to their classes, I was soon out of the IIT campus.

My jethai (my mother’s
elder sister) had accompanied me, but we drove in a secretly grateful companionable
silence. The road was empty apart from a herd of goats that sat authoritatively
right in the middle of it. I rolled down the windows to let the cold wind beat against
my face and course their way throw my curls. Just as I was about to turn left
on the Amingaon road, a huge Buddha statue with yellow robes and indigo hair
caught my eye. It was set atop a hill a few hundred yards away on the opposite side. Why hadn’t I ever
noticed it earlier despite taking this road umpteen times?

On an impulse, I turned right and towards the immense statue
of Buddha that sat here in the middle of nowhere, so far away from the city. I
stopped near three tiny temples which I had misjudged as the path uphill to the
statue. We got out of the car anyway at the insistence of the priest who had
come out on seeing us. I was hesitant as the only thing religious about me is
that I religiously avoided any place of worship thronging with crowds and commercialized rituals. But here
we were the only visitors (don’t want to use the word devotees).

The priest told us that this was the Jaiguru Ganesh Mandir. My
jethai was more pious than me and did the rounds of the Ganesha temple (where the idol was carved into the slope of hill that formed one of the
temple walls), the Shiva temple and the Lakshmi temple.

I just stood there
soaking in the quietness and serenity and watched the tiny shed next to a
tree with red blossoms, a lone dove perched up on the dome of the Lakshmi temple and large boulders and trees that surrounded the temple. The priest wasn’t judgmental or inquisitive
of my avoidance of worship, and came forward smilingly to hand me a sacred flower. I smiled back in acceptance. He
directed us the way to the Buddha statue which we were told was located in the Assam
Buddha Vihar.

Barely a hundred meters away, we drove uphill into a narrow path. On seeing two old cars covered with dust and grime and half-hidden in
the bushes, I wondered if they were abandoned by their
owners who couldn’t find any way to reverse and drive down the narrow
curves of the path we were on. Chuckling at that possibility of my own car, I parked it
and walked up the stone steps into what I assumed was a Buddhist
monastery.

In her late sixties now, my jethai
wasn’t keen on climbing too many stairs. We reached the verandah of what I
still assumed to be a monastery and hence was on the lookout for meditating monks when a
woman dressed in a baggy yellow kurta welcomed us with a cheery ‘namaste, please come in’. She dragged out a plastic chair for my jethai to sit in, and showed me the path
further uphill to the ‘Bada wala Buddha,
Big Buddha’. I walked on alone just as I heard the woman tell my jethai "I thought I was a tall woman, but you are even taller than me". The trail was relatively short
and populated with bushes, boulders and red beetles.

The giant torso of the Buddha loomed
into view soon enough. Even though it wasn’t as large as the one I had seen in the
Tawang monastery, it still cast an imposing figure. There was a view-point that
looked out into lush paddy fields, groves of coconut trees swaying in the brisk
wind and the distant river. A pale sun shone through the clouds. If I had drove up
alone and if I had a book with me, I would have stayed there the entire day.

Half an hour later, I was back with my jethai and the woman with the pleasant face who introduced herself
as C. S. Lama. She insisted that we visit her private prayer hall and took us
into her home, which I had mistook for a monastery. We walked into
a narrow lobby and up some steep stairs to a room with a shabby wooden door. But
the lock had got stuck and as her house-help was out on leave for Bihu, we couldn’t enter the prayer
hall.

Instead she showed us the mud-filled wooden pot filled with numerous
half-burnt incense sticks stuck on it and a wok containing a paste of flour, milk
and honey. Every evening Mrs. Lama prayed for peace and poured a spoonful of
the milk and flour mixture into the incense-stick pot in a gesture of offering
it as ‘bhog’ to the departed souls of
loved ones. She then showed us the two Stupas that stood on a tiny hillock
adjacent to the verandah.

She guided us through the delightful maze that was her cozy
home. The bedroom was littered with old photographs and magazines on the floor;
a television was tuned to IPL match highlights; and a stationary exercise bike stood
against the large floor to ceiling windows. The view from the bedroom and the
adjacent balcony was breathtaking and I could almost touch the blossoms of
the gulmohar tree. Mrs. Lama told us how on some nights leopards and deers
climbed out of the forests and roamed outside her window. Just hearing about it
made me want to camp out there till the next sighting.

She showed us the
photographs of her grandchild and nostalgically said, He
is seven and often I forget the passage of years and mistake him for my son at
that age. They look identical. She took us to an old stove and the pile
of firewood lined next to it. Those of us
from the hills like our food with the distinct flavor that comes from cooking on
firewood.

Mrs. Lama insisted that we stay for coffee as we had visited
on the occasion of Bihu and ushered
us into the dinning hall bathed in a warm orange light. As she took the lids off tiny red cups with painted yellow dragons and poured in the coffee powder (ironically stored in a Bournvita container), she started narrating the story of her life.
She had constructed the entire Assam Buddha Vihar on her own as a tribute to her
husband. Just like Shahjahan built Taj
Mahal in the memory of Mumtaz, she chuckled.She was assigned the land by the government
in the outskirts (as was her preference to
be away from the city) in 1984 and whenever sufficient funds
were accumulated the construction progressed step by step, and was completed in 1989. It would be
completing its twenty-fifth foundation day next year.

She had come to Assam as a young bride from Bhutan, accompanying
her husband and used to be the unofficial and preferred translator in all his business
transactions here. They ran a flourishing real estate and transport business. Despite
having homes in several places in India and Bhutan, she decided to settle down
in Assam when she had made up her mind to construct the Buddha Vihar. I used to have a horrible temper and
portrayed a tough exterior in the early days, but I had to do so to prevent
people from duping me or taking advantage of the fact that my husband was no more, she
said matter-of-factly. She proudly stated that her son had graduated from
St.Stephen College and now lived in Delhi with his wife and son. Mrs. Lama’s daughter is married to a Bhutanese
national and her grand-daughter had just passed her senior year of school. She
broke into giggles talking about the events leading up to her son’s marriage
that involved some parental resistance and a short ‘living in sin’ (as the term goes in conservative societies) period. I am a broad-minded, modern woman. I
understand these things, she said and I couldn’t help feeling a rush of
endearment for her.

Now she lives alone in the home she had built for her atop
this secluded hill, adjacent to the giant Buddha statue. Downstairs there is a
communal prayer hall, where we prayed before a bronze statue of Buddha set atop
an artistically set altar. There are plush low settees, gongs, prayer wheels,
portraits of leaders she admired, and hand-drawn paintings depicting the
teachings of Buddha. She showed me a painting about the fate in after-life and
rebirths if we conduct misdeeds in the present life. See, if you needlessly cut down a healthy tree, you will be reborn as a
tree too and get mercilessly chopped down. Agar galat kaam karega, toh aadmi
agle janam mein khamba ban sakta hai (pointing to a man with a pillar for a
torso). Finding her own words very funny, she burst into another set of giggles.

Mrs. Lama mentions that she has eight rooms in the adjacent
guest house, that is used by visiting family members as well as occasional
tourists. We cook our food together. Come
and stay sometime. A new tourist lodge is coming up adjacent to the property
and would soon be functional. Mrs. Lama’s warm hospitality, endearing and easy
familiarity, delightful conversations, the serene ambience, the peaceful prayer hall, the majestic Buddha statue, the addictive quietude of
being far away from the city, the surrounding lush forests and the blossoming
Gulmohar; Assam Buddha Vihar is a must visit for the Guwahati residents and
tourists alike. I look forward to visit this quaint little place again for
the Buddha Jayanti celebrations next week (25th May).

I am just glad that a mundane morning drive brought up such quiet, serendipitous finds. The storm inside had abated.